halfway to nowhere
by guide-to-the-galaxy
Summary: It's Christmas Eve and he knits a scarf; it's Christmas Eve decades later, and the world is dying while a house burns.


_(a/n) A SAINW Story. I'm sorry this may hurt._

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It all ends with a burning house. The house burns in the falling snow, in the middle of the night and the footsteps he leaves behind make imprints to the forest.

And when he's got there, and his bones ache and he is numb, Raphael kneels before what is left of his family, laid out on the frozen grass.

He laughs. Something cold and brittle out into the night.

"Hey, Dad," he says, the words breaking apart under the weight of some dug up agony.

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 _His heart comes alive that night._

 _Like the big tree the city's got now- the one their dad took them out to see.  
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 _Mikey dances like it was the best thing he's ever seen, and he watches Donnie's eyes glow, the illumination reflecting off his glasses, swallowed up and projected in his wide stare. Leo doesn't admit to astonishment, only allowing himself to crack a grin and a breathy laugh at the way Mikey tackles Don into the snow._

 _They never understood what the holidays were, but the lights from the city that shone through the sewer grates sung the magnificent warmth and life above them, trickling into the frigidity of their home, built up on their love and poorly constructed together with something new and raw._

 _His father finds fabric in the alley, and some thread and yarn. And he pushes Leo over; he landed on the ice and scraped his eye._

 _So he has to knit for punishment. Six hours in a room with needles and yarn._

 _When his brothers ask about it in their barely contained, obnoxious laughs, he denies that he ever enjoyed a moment of it._

 _But in the quiet of what they have made their father's bedroom, he asks to learn; it was cold, and he had seen these tasteless sweaters on the television that people seemed to laugh over once.  
He figured that could keep them warm._

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" …sometimes ya think stuff over…all that's been dumped an' flushed for years. Heh. A-and…and ya wish you could cut that wire in ya brain sometimes- no use reliv'n it…noth'n I can do now or anyone…as if any'a of us is left…I'm here sure- others are too. But we might as well be dead, dad." he loses touch, with himself, with this. And for a moment he cannot breathe, the ends of words dripped with the pain.

"An' I…wish I could jus' let all hell break an' take me…heh-" he rolls his shoulders under Casey's favorite stupid police detective jacket, torn from use and late nights, " Almost forgot it did…guess 'm immortal."  
The snow keeps falling on the grave of his father. And miles away, the farmhouse burns.

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 _Splinter takes him by the hands and guides his unsteady fingers into the woven work of Mikey's new scarf._

 _A whole rainbow of colors and a mess of complex stitches._

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He leaves his father's grave and whispers a prayer to his brothers.

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 _Alarms blare around, sending the darkened hallways into a lurid ruby glow, and the lights flash across his wild eyes that they flicker down the corridors- and his breaths are shallow and heavy and he gasps out in a frustrated kind of pain as he hoists his little brother up; he's been made slick and slippery with blood._

 _And Raph doesn't know his own steps, can't decipher the way to run as the pounding footfalls surround them._

 _With every stride is his brother's whimper and Raph loses the last edge of focus he has to glance at him, at his smile beaten off his face into something dying. His blue eyes fall closed and Raph cries out._

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" _No one should be alone tonight. C'mon, Raph…"_ April whispers above the static of his phone, " _Not even yo-"_

"'S just another day. 'M not coming back, kid."

" _Could you at least tell me where you're at?"_

Her voice is a gentle croak through the speakers.

"Nah…no, I can't," he looks around the truck he filled with all the things he could never let go of and stares up at the flurries, the ones that land on the sunroof, "I'm sorry."

" _It's so cold in the city, Raph,"_ she says, and only half of him wishes he could see her broken smile that she had to be wearing now, delirious with pain and loss, " _It'd be awful if I froze out here."_

"Yeah," he laughs, and it's cut by the smoke he hacks up, "Y-yeah- a real, damn shame, huh?"

" _Take care of yourself, Raphael."_

"You too…"

He doesn't have much to say, not like he used to. But somehow, like always, they make it work.

They talk for another hour.

And he starts to knit her an ugly sweater and a hat- like their former selves, like the old skin they've stepped out of, and stripped off and left behind to burn and rot, torn apart by whatever beast came to destroy what they had.

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 _They fall to the tiles and he tips his brother's chin and begs him to stay a little while longer. "Just few more minutes, kay, Mikes…gimme a minute…" and he bites back the tears, looking around the halls for any sign of Donnie,"Ya hear me- you stay awake….Mikey…"_

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" _I can't do it, Dad," he tosses himself back against the beanbag chair, his shell sinking into it, and lets the yarn fall onto the tatami mat below him._

 _But Splinter doesn't usually take giving up well; he guides his hands again._

" _We will try this again. And again." he takes the needle and pierces the thread._

 _He keeps that sloppy, undone scarf under his bed._

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Splinter died on December 21st. So Raphael does not believe the brilliance of holidays and tradition and whatever kind of benevolence it was supposed to bring.

Because it did not save his father.

And they had his new walking staff, dazzling and engraved, still in its place on the tatami mats, by the new pinball machine Donnie fixed up. They were going to play soccer and it would be the first time they'd have a real net set up.

There was nothing left by the end of the night. Those soldiers found them. Saki's ninja came through and there was _nothing left._

And anything they left behind he tore apart later.

They didn't even find a body- to bring home.

They couldn't _even do that._

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He turns off the truck, and pulls the key out the ignition.

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 _The blood comes out too fast. He can't stop it._

 _Mikey squeezes his hand._

" _Hang on…ha-hang on, okay? Okay…jus' a little more…" he doesn't know the way. Donnie falls somewhere in the fray of guards. Mikey squeezes harder and Leo's roar rips through the building as it tilts and he smells more of the dead._

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The city knew about them- him and his brothers. All the things they've done. Without really knowing.

They were the protectors.

And so when it began to fall and crumble, the weight of it fell on them- weary shoulders made weak by grief and anger.

Fear.

When he can't sleep, he pulls at the yarn, makes something new for all the things he's let die.

The winter winds carry snow and ash over the city.

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 _Mikey dies of infection. They cut the arm wrong and he gagged on his own blood on the bathroom floor of the farmhouse. They never find Donnie._

 _And he remembers Leo. Leo covered in the blood of hostages he couldn't save, trembling under the weight of a burning building. He stopped, fought her…she manipulated him and he thought he could save…._

 _They ended it like they met. And, still, Raph thinks, that Leo loves her._

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The cold takes feeling and sensation from his body, and the snow piles up, covering the truck and his view of the night and spreading fire of the farmhouse, watching it fall to pieces, and the plumes of smoke stretch out into the woods, into the clouds and over the frozen lake.

His fingers tremble over the loose yarn of an undone scarf (the colors are a mess of orange and red, purple and blue; warm and cool blending in an impossibly perfect mess) and tug at it fondly.  
His eyes form halos and the frost crawls in the last warm, fighting parts of him. Chokes it and burns it cold.

Raphael almost thinks, that if he fools himself enough, he could mistake the flames for the city with its flurrying snow and strung lights.

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